The theme to The Signalman is that of a man describing his experience of meeting a Signalman being haunted by a ghost. This ghost seemed to be warning him of hid death. It involves the two main characters, the narrator and the signalman. The Signalman described by the narrator,
‘His attitude was one of such expectation and watchfulness’
The narrator is not described throughout the story. The theme to Lamb to the slaughter is that of a husband and his wife. It is set in their house and their wife murders her husband with a leg of lamb. It is a story that tells us of how she tries to cover up the murder and tries to get the blame away from her and destroys all the evidence. The wife is described as,
‘Her skin had acquired a wonderful translucent quality, the mouth was soft, and the eyes with their new placid look, seemed larger, darker than before.’
The husband is described as having
‘A warm male glow that came out of him’
And the
‘Far look in his eyes when they rested on her, the funny slope of the mouth.’
These are things that the writer has written that the wife thinks about Patrick, her husband. I like the character of the wife because I like the way she covers up her murdering her husband. She seems quite scheming and clever. I think the way she got rid of the evidence of the murder was good though it wasn’t planned. That’s what I like about the story, the way everything falls into place at the end. In the Signalman I didn’t find the ghost very realistic or convincing. I don’t think Charles Dickens described it well enough; it didn’t make me very interested at all. Charles Dickens uses old English and so sometimes is hard to understand. I think that is why I didn’t enjoy reading it or find it interesting.
In both stories the authors try to build up a lot of suspense towards the time where the reader finds out the twist in the tale. Personally I think there is more suspense in The Signalman. This is shown, as the reader wants to know more about this ghost and what it is trying to say to the Signalman. Though it is quite easy to figure out what is going to happen. Lamb to the Slaughter uses some suspense, mostly in the middle of the story. Unlike The Signalman that has suspense building up at the beginning of the story Lamb to the Slaughter does not start until nearer towards the middle of the story.
The similarities of these two are that a person dies in each of them. In The Signalman it is the Signalman who dies by getting run down by a train and in Lamb to the Slaughter the husband, Patrick dies from being murdered by his own wife.
The way they differ from each other is that in The Signalman he is being warned about his death before it happens by a ghost but when it happens it is seen as more of an accident. In Lamb to the Slaughter he is murdered and it wasn’t expected at all.
The twist in the tale in Lamb to the Slaughter is that nobody expects the wife to get rid of the evidence the way she does. We expect her to get caught out or even be suspected rather than being let off so easily. I find it clever the way everything falls into place the way it does. The twist in the tale in The Signalman is at the end when the narrator finds out that a train had run down the Signalman and right before that the driver was calling out to him
‘Below there! Look out! Look out!’
This is what the ghost had been calling out to him for days before hand. It makes you think about how the ghost knew.
‘I may, in closing it, point out the coincidence that the warning of the engine-driver included, not only the words which the unfortunate signalman had repeated to me as haunting him, but also the words which myself – not he – had attached.’
By Rachel Preston 10ME
